Monday, 11 June 2012

String theory

According
to some clever people – even more exceedingly clever people than Mr Kipling's
cakes are good – string theory could well be the Theory For Everything.

Now
I don't know whether it equals 42, but having taken a glance into mechanics of
the quantum variety a few decades ago, I shall not be delving far into
something that the likes of Stephen Hawking comprehends.

String
theory, as far as I'm now concerned, is about how much of the green gardening
twine is actually needed to give my peas and beans a helping hand.

After
Friday's worries about whether I'd be able to rise to the task of erection -
stop sniggering at the back - it came surprisingly easy.

Eight,
six-foot bamboo canes, spaced (reasonably) evenly, four on either side of the
tender plants, were pushed well into the ground and then tied into an inverted
‘v’ across them, with two extra placed between the pairs at each end.

Another
cane was then placed across the top and tied into place.

All
well and good. Then followed the slightly more complex stuff. There needed to
be three rows of sting all around my construction, at different heights, so
that the plants can grasp something as they haul themselves nearer the sky.

You
can't to it in one go – or at least, I couldn’t. But somehow, in what turned
out to be a surprisingly decent weekend as far as the weather was concerned, I
managed it.

I
had accompaniment: sound testing for a mini festival in the park behind us. A
Nandos ‘gignic’, which apparently combined music and a piri piri picnic.

Given
the wind, yet more string was required to gently tie all the beans to thin,
wooden stakes to help them before they can reach the first row of string. The
three chili plants each got a stake too.

It
was The Other Half who suggested using a number of wooden shelves – spare ones
from a unit – to create a ‘path’ on the bit of carpark land I’m now slowly
converting.

They’ve
been spare for so long, propped up in a corner, that it seemed likely that we
didn’t really need seven and could make do with a single one.

And
then there were the snail inns. Three were part buried alongside the beans and
peas, then given a good glug of cheap Polish beer, and lidded.

The
policy has worked. Well, there’s at least one deceased gastropod in the one
that I part buried in the pot with the lemon tree.

I
assume it had gone for a drink after munching the adjoining basil – and not
made it out again. I allowed myself a little sense of rejoicing.

And
the great learning experience that is gardening continues in other ways.

After
the baby salad leaves were utterly destroyed by a snail just over a week ago, I
had sown some new ones.

And at the same time, with the radish crop struggling
to show much interest in producing anything edible, I’d sown more of them too.

In
both cases, seedlings are popping their heads into the (grey) light of day.

The
weather may be far from seasonally normal, but both are doing better than the
previous sowings. I am assuming that ‘sow from April and harvest in four weeks’
doesn’t mean much if you then have a late spring that is as unseasonal as a heatwave
in March.

At
least I now comprehend that things only really grow when the soil is warm
enough – and the increase in tiny weeds appearing is indicative of just that.

Mind, I'm still getting over the speed with which other things DO grow – the beans are just one example. Goodness knows where they'd be if we'd had a more 'normal' spring.

The nasturtiums seem to have been unhindered by the weather, racing to trail over the edges of the pot with that they share with the vine.

And now they are flowering; opening out petals of searingly vivid orange and yellow and even deep red.

Which
brings us neatly to another part of that learning. Since so many seedlings look
the same at first, you can’t just assume that everything is a weed. You have to
wait a little.

And watering: even when there’s been so much rain that it
makes the drought even more risible than previously, there are still plants
that need some extra help – not least because, when it’s bouncing down, it’s
bouncing right off the soil again.

Then there’s the fact that plants in pots need more water
than their counterparts in a bed.

So I am learning to look at my plants – and to see how they’re
looking. And to check the soil to see if it’s still moist.

If the garden doesn’t quite fit into a general theory of
everything, and if it isn't quite quantum mechanics, there seems to be plenty enough string involved to keep my mind
busy.

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About Me

London-based journalist, writer, photographer and artist, with one Other Half and three cats.
This blog is about all sorts of things, but mostly reviews. My interests include comics and opera (and even comic opera), cats, tattoos and art.
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